Posts Tagged mmo

With the plethora of online MMOs has come one of the bad parts of gaming. Laziness.

With no need to imagine, every MMO has become a hack and slash fest, filled with hordes of players so uncouth their own families wouldn’t acknowledge them.

Beyond them is the real issue. There is no incentive to have fun. Every game is crammed full of shortcuts to make the players lives simpler. Quests are handed out on a platter, with pointers leading directly to the person/place/thing that needs to be accomplised. In-game chat crosses the worlds and is so prevalent that few bother to read the documents or manuals. They know that as soon as they enter any game, within minutes they can simply start asking, over and over how to do the simplest actions. Like move, or look around.

Online resources are so prevalent that nothing is explored for. Nothing that can be known about a game isn’t already documented, or in the process thereof. Power leveling is the norm. If a game works on levels, its a race to see how fast you can get the max level. Fun? Not really, its a job. And there are programs will help you craft, hunt, sell, map your routes, chat and gain experience as you sleep, or play another game altogether.

Once you pick a genre you like, theres little to do in the games that expands your brain. The very first time you enter a game, the maps are new, the critters and whatever obsticles are new and life is nifty… Then some hours go by, and you notice that even when you enter new areas, the living obstacles are the same, just changed in color. The items all start to look the same, and you notice that almost all the players go to the same places in the same order all the time. You reroll or remake a character to ‘experience’ something new. And go to the same maps, the same mobs, the same loot etc….

As its said in a popular sci-fi show “..he’s dead, Jim”

These games will rumble on for a decade and some in this manner before some bright set of developers finally figure out a way to incorporate some new technology and this type of gaming become nostolgic. Its happend before, several times already. Think of the line from Pong to Guiter hero. Or text based MUDs and such to the MMOs of today. Life, and V-life advances all the time.

In the mean time I’m going to take my hunter/scout/soldier and to the the cave/complex/fort and kill/defeat/disable the monsters/robots/aliens alone or with my party/group/cohort made up of my kinship/guild/clan and rescue the land/princess/artifact and eat cheetos.